Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. A graduate of Brown and Columbia, her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, The Paris Review Daily, Transition, and elsewhere. She is a cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal and a contributing editor to Literary Hub. She has been in residence at the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Dar al-Ma'mûn in Marrakech, Morocco. Clemmons lives in Los Angeles with her husband, where she teaches at The Colburn Conservatory and Occidental College.

A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree
NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Finalist
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in
Fiction & the Aspen Words Literary PrizeNamed a
Best Book of the Year by Vogue, NPR, Elle,
Esquire, Buzzfeed, San Francisco
Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington
Post, The A.